They include a redundant colliery, the burnt out shell of a 13th century moated manor house, a Victorian sewage pumping station, and a vast, battered shed which is the only remaining airship hangar in Europe.

Without huge amounts of money spent on repairs many will collapse - and even with huge amounts of money none will be worth what has been spent.

The total estimated repair bill for just these 16, of the 1,235 buildings and structures on the new Buildings at Risk Register published yesterday, is £127.9m. However, that is £65m more than the buildings would then be worth, on the most optimistic commercial assessment: the problem led to the collapse of a scheme to convert one of the 16, a spectacular Edwardian former insurance building in Liverpool, into a hotel.

Dr Thurley said this conservation deficit, the yawning gap between what the buildings need and what any commercial or even charitable investor could hope to earn from them, can only be plugged with public money.

It is way beyond the current means of English Heritage, the government's conservation quango, whose own grant in aid has effectively been frozen for the last 10 years. At the moment it can only afford to give around £4.5m each year in repair grants for listed buildings.

"What has been happening is that as land values soar in some parts of the country all the easy ones are coming off the register," Dr Thurley said.

In the south-east, where developers clamour for every inch of spare land, there is commercial hope even for some infamous cases. The report was launched at Battersea power station, an icon on the London skyline left gutted and decaying after a procession of owners and failed development proposals. The power station has been included in every Buildings at Risk register since they began eight years ago, but has now been acquired by Treasury Holdings, an Irish investment company, which is about to start structural repairs to stop the decay of the huge building.

However, developers are not rushing to help repair sites like the important buildings at the vast Chatterley Whitfield colliery in Staffordshire. Some of the buildings can be converted and re-used, but some, like the pithead, are vital to understanding the site but will never be used again for their original purpose.

Even in the south-east some buildings present epic problems. The Crossness pumping station at Bexley in south-east London, designed to store and then pump London's sewage into the ebbing Thames by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the brilliant Victorian engineer who transformed London's drains, is still working. But it is likely to become redundant, leaving the building and its interiors - described by Dr Thurley as "cathedral like" - marooned in the middle of a working Thames Water treatment site.

Over the last year 88 buildings have been removed from the register, and 52 added, continuing what Dr Thurley called an encouraging downward trend.

However, 1,235 entries remain, one in 30 of all the Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings. The problem is worst in the north-east, with 7.6% at risk, and lowest at the south-east, with under 2%.

A fifth of the buildings on the register are in the highest priority A category, judged in immediate risk of further decay and possibly complete collapse.

Although plans are being made to save almost a third of the buildings, and almost half are capable of economic re-use, in 17% per cent of cases the owner is considered the main problem, often refusing either to repair or sell.

The problem buildings include some grand owners and estates. One is a 1729 mausoleum by Hawksmoor, part of the Castle Howard estate in Yorkshire where Brideshead Revisited was filmed.

The Queen herself has made the register, with the tomb of her ancestors, the grade I listed Frogmore mausoleum in the shadow of Windsor Castle, judged at risk and given four hard hats (out of six) urgency of need for repairs.

Treasures in trouble

These are England's 16 most expensive historic wrecks. The total cost of repairs is probably more than £127m, but more serious is the £65m conservation deficit - the shortfall between the cost of the work and the commercial value of the building once restored.